"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture."
-- Pope Sixtus III

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum stopped in McKinney, Texas, earlier today, where he met with evangelical faith leaders. During their time together, the pastors and congregants “laid hands on” the candidate and prayed for him, as can be seen in the below image:

Santorum, a Catholic, is said to have performed very well among evangelical Christians in these three states. His conservative views on gay marriage, abortion and a multitude of other issues, make him a prime candidate for more right-leaning, socially-conservative voters. The New York Times reports:

All three states that held contests Tuesday have very conservative Republican electorates that are believed to include large numbers of the sort of evangelicals and Tea Party adherents who had flocked to Mr. Santorum’s candidacy in Iowa. It was a turnabout from four years ago, when Mr. Romney won in Colorado and Minnesota as the so-called conservative alternative to the man who became the Republican nominee in 2008, Senator John McCain.

So it seems Santorum may be capturing the attention of Christians and their leaders. When it comes to his meeting with pastors, some who fall outside of the Christian realm may have been confused to see Santorum standing with his head bowed surrounded by numerous pastors with outstretched hands on his shoulders.

This practice, known as the “laying on of hands,” is a form of worship during which numerous believers come around an individual and offer up prayers for him or her. The significance is both symbolic and literal, as the Holy Spirit and blessing are sought for the subject of the group prayer.

Below, see a CNN video that shows this:

The conservative contender will be making a number of stops in the Lone Star State, as he seeks out support following well-publicized victories in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.

Egypt‘s Muslim Brotherhood is calling on the country’s ruling generals to sack the current military-appointed government, saying it has failed to manage the deteriorating security and economic situation in the country.

Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan says the military should appoint a Brotherhood representative prime minister, who would then form a new coalition government.

The Brotherhood controls nearly 50 percent of the seats in the new parliament.

Ghozlan said Thursday a government backed by parliament would be more empowered to handle challenging security and economic problems.

In the past week, Egypt has been rattled by a deadly soccer riot that sparked days of clashes between protesters and the police. At least 89 people have been killed since the violence began last week.

But the move is ironic considering that at the beginning of the country’s uprising last year, the Brotherhood maintained that it would not be political. That’s been proven false.

The University of North Dakota resumed using its contentious Fighting Sioux nickname Wednesday even though it triggered NCAA sanctions, leaving some fans weary of the seven-year fight over a moniker that critics believe is demeaning.

A law requiring the school to use its longtime nickname and logo, which shows the profile of an American Indian warrior, was repealed eight months after it took effect last year in a bid to help the university avoid NCAA sanctions. But ardent nickname supporters filed petitions with more than 17,000 signatures late Tuesday, demanding that the issue be put to a statewide vote.

As part of that process, the law — which the university, the state Board of Higher Education and local lawmakers oppose — temporarily goes back into effect. An NCAA spokesman said Wednesday that means the school won't host championship events, and its athletes will be barred from wearing uniforms with the nickname or logo in post-season play.

"As soon as that petition was filed last night, the law reverts," University President Robert Kelley told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "I don't want to violate the law."

Still, the decision frustrated fans and alumni who have watched the fight drag on since 2005, when the NCAA prodded 19 schools to get rid of American Indian nicknames, logos and mascots that it considered "hostile and abusive" to Indians. The University of North Dakota is the only school left where the issue is in serious dispute.

"It's getting pretty tiresome, even for a pretty gung-ho nickname supporter," said 36-year-old alumnus Shawn Carlson, who lives in Fargo, about 80 miles south of the school's campus in Grand Forks, near the Minnesota border.

Former Fighting Sioux football player Ross Almlie, 39, agreed: "I'd have just as much pride for the university with or without the nickname and logo. Put me in the camp that believes we have bigger fish to fry."

Since the repeal, the school has moved to retire the nickname and logo, dropping references to them from websites and changing Internet addresses that referred to the Fighting Sioux. The Indian profile was replaced by a new logo showing the interlocked letters N and D.

However, nickname supporters revived the issue anew by filing referendum petitions that they said had more than 17,000 signatures. They need a minimum of 13,452 signatures from eligible North Dakota voters to qualify for the June ballot.

Secretary of State Al Jaeger has about a month to scrutinize the petitions and decide whether they meet legal standards. He then will decide whether the referendum should go on the June ballot.

Kelley said the university's men's and women's hockey teams and the women's basketball team have a chance for post-season play in the coming months, and he wasn't yet sure how the teams would be affected.

"But clearly, by being mandated by state law to be Fighting Sioux, we are right back to where we were before the repeal," the president said.

The university has been accepted into the Big Sky Conference as part of its move to NCAA Division I athletics.

Doug Fullerton, the conference's commissioner, said the school could become a weaker conference member if uses its Fighting Sioux nickname and logo because it would be barred from hosting playoff games. The sanctions also could result in recruiting problems.

"We're not making a value judgment about the nickname," Fullerton said. "We think we're one of the strongest conferences in the (Football Championship Subdivision), and we expect our members to play right at the top. If they can't play post-season home games, that doesn't help."

The state Board of Higher Education will likely meet with North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem on Monday to discuss whether to go to court to block reinstatement of the law, board President Grant Shaft said Wednesday.

When the fight began seven years ago, the NCAA told the University of North Dakota and the other schools with American Indian nicknames or logos that to avoid sanctions, they needed to change the names or obtain permission from local tribes. Most changed their nicknames, though some — including the Florida State Seminoles and the Central Michigan Chippewas — got tribal permission to keep them.

North Dakota challenged the NCAA edict in court. In a settlement, the school agreed to begin retiring its nickname if it could not obtain consent to continue its use from North Dakota's Standing Rock and Spirit Lake Sioux tribes by Nov. 30, 2010.

Spirit Lake tribal members endorsed the name. But the Standing Rock Sioux's tribal council, which opposed the nickname, has declined to support it or to allow its tribal members to vote.

Current supporters of the nickname and petition drive include members of both the Spirit Lake and Standing Rock Sioux tribes.

The law forcing the school to use the name and logo was approved in March, pushed by some prominent university alumni and Republican House Majority Leader Al Carlson. Carlson said he resented the NCAA's bullying and what he regarded as the Board of Higher Education's clumsy handling of the matter.

Carlson hoped the law would make the NCAA reconsider its opposition to the nickname and logo, but NCAA officials remained adamant during a summer meeting with Carlson, Gov. Jack Dalrymple and other officials.

The law was repealed during a special legislative session last November, with many former supporters switching sides and saying it had not accomplished its purpose of influencing the NCAA.

Reed Soderstrom, chairman of the referendum campaign, hailed the university's decision Wednesday and discouraged members of the higher education board from going back to court.

"They would seem to be following a method of trying to disenfranchise the voters, and I don't think they have the power to do that," he said.

The Pentagon on Thursday will propose rule changes that will allow more women to formally serve in jobs closer to the front lines.

Defense officials say as many as 14,000 positions could be opened up, though the restrictions on women serving in infantry combat units will remain in place.

The rule change reflects the ongoing reality that in a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, women were already dying in combat with the blurring of the traditional definition of front lines. Nearly 300,000 women have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and 144 of them have died in those conflicts.

The rule change is included in a report required by Congress as part of last year's Defense Authorization Bill that has been overdue for months. The new rules likely will not go into effect until the summer if Congress raises no objections to the change.

Women will still be barred from serving in infantry combat units, defense officials say, but the changes will formally open up new positions at the combat battalion level that, until now, have been off limits.

The new jobs opening up for female service members will be combat support positions, including communications, intelligence and logistical positions, defense officials add. Typically, these jobs have been made available at the combat brigade level, but not at the lower battalion level, which was deemed too close to combat situation.

However, the insurgent nature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has blurred the line for combat situations. That often meant that all units likely could be exposed to some combat, including units where women were allowed to serve.

For example, in Iraq it was a regular occurrence that units that were technically not combat units were seeing combat. For example, women have been allowed to serve in military police units for years, but when those units were dispatched to Iraq to provide security and training, they were often under risk of attack.

In 2005, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, serving with a military police unit in Iraq, became the first woman to receive the Silver Star since World War II. Hester received the medal for valor for her role in fighting off a large insurgent attack on her convoy.

The rules to be announced Thursday will apply to all of the military services, but will have the greatest impact on the Army, given the large number of ground combat units it has.

A year ago, the Military Leadership Diversity Commission recommended that the military lift the ban on women serving in combat units.

The advisory panel of current and retired military officers said that keeping women from serving in combat units was an obstacle to promotions and career advancement.

The analysis was led by a New England Aquarium researcher. It showed a drop in the stress-related hormone in right whales following the attacks. The drop coincided with a period of significantly lower ocean noise after ship traffic came to a near-standstill for security reasons following the terror attacks.

The analysis combined data from two experiments that happened to be going on simultaneously. One involved acoustic recordings of right whales in Canada's Bay of Fundy. The other collected samples of whale feces, which contain stress-indicating hormones.

It wasn't until 2009 that a researcher realized the data existed for the analysis.

The entire staff at a Los Angeleselementary school is being removed while authorities investigate horrific allegations of sexual abuse by two of the school's teachers, one of whom is accused of blindfolding children, taping their mouths and photographing them in a classroom.

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy said Monday night that more than 120 staff members at Miramonte Elementary School — everyone from the principal and teachers to the cafeteria workers — were being replaced because a full investigation of the allegations will be disruptive and staffers will require support to get through the scandal.

"We intend to interview every adult, every adult who works at that school, whether they are a teacher or administrator, or whether they are an after-school playground worker or a custodian or a secretary. I mean every single solitary adult who works at Miramonte," Deasy said to parents who packed a high school gymnasium.

An entire staff has been selected to come into Miramonte's classrooms to take over teaching for the time being, and there will be a psychiatric social worker in every classroom to help students and staff cope with any issues.

The teachers and support staff will remain officially attached to Miramonte even though they are indefinitely being transferred, district spokeswoman Monica Carazo said Tuesday.

"He (Deasy) will decide if and when to return them back to the Miramonte school. So nothing is definite at this time," she said.

Deasy said the employees, which include nearly 90 teachers, will remain out of the school at least until August, when Miramonte changes from a year-round system to a regular summer-vacation schedule. When classes resume, there will be fewer teachers and fewer students because some will be transferred to new schools that are opening.

Deasy announced Monday that an investigation of the allegations will include interviewing former as well as current Miramonte students. The probe will be handled by an independent commission led by retired California Supreme Court Chief Justice Carlos Moreno.

All employees will be paid during the investigation, district spokesman Tom Waldman said. Officials didn't know how long the investigation would take.

"The last thing I'm worried about is a budget issue," Deasy said. "The No. 1 thing I'm worried about is the students."

School officials canceled classes on Tuesday and Wednesday as a cooling-off and transition period, Waldman said. All current staff members will report to another location, where they will be interviewed, he said. The new staff will report on Thursday.

Deasy emphasized that all new staff members being brought into the classroom went through a "very rigorous screening process."

He added Miramonte staff members are having a difficult time understanding this situation.

"I'm mostly overwhelmed by how grieved they are, how upset they are, how broken their own personal trust is. In many ways, they are victimized too," Deasy said. "They taught in this school for years and assumed everyone else was doing good things."

United Teachers Los Angeles said in a statement that union leaders and staff have met with instructors at Miramonte.

"We support a thorough, vigorous and fair investigation of all allegations," the statement said. "It's everyone's responsibility to ensure that any and all allegations are thoughtfully and carefully investigated."

Miramonte parents were happy to hear the news first from the superintendent. They have complained bitterly that they weren't informed about the yearlong investigation. Many heard the sordid details on news reports or from the TV crews camped out at the school's entrance.

School officials said they deferred to sheriff's detectives, who asked them not to divulge details that might affect their investigation.

Maria Jimenez, 51, said the parents are divided over the decision to remove the school's 88 teachers and 40 other staff members.

"Some are in favor. Others are against it because they did this without advising us or consulting us," she said.

The decision follows the arrest of two longtime Miramonte teachers: Mark Berndt and Martin Springer.

Berndt, 61, was charged last week with committing lewd acts on 23 children, ages 6 to 10, between 2005 and 2010. The acts cited by authorities include blindfolding children and feeding them his semen in his classroom, in what children were allegedly told was a tasting game.

Berndt, who worked at the school for 32 years, remains jailed on $23 million bail and could face life in prison if convicted.

Springer, 49, was arrested Friday on suspicion of fondling two girls in his classroom. He was being held on $2 million bail.

Springer taught at Miramonte for his entire career, which started in 1986, the district said. He taught second grade. The school board is scheduled to discuss firing him in a closed-door meeting Tuesday.

Investigators said they know of no connection between the Miramonte cases. Berndt and Springer know each other and took their classes on at least two joint field trips in the past decade, according to the Los Angeles Times.

More than a quarter of the students at Miramonte were absent from school Monday while parents demanded more protection at the school, with attendance reaching just 72 percent, according to figures from the Los Angeles Unified School District.

About three dozen parents and supporters protested in front of the main doors of the school earlier Monday, some carrying a banner that read, "We the parents demand our children be protected from lewd teacher acts."

As night fell, about 100 angry parents marched from the elementary school to the nearby meeting with administrators.

School police watched and sheriff's deputies were on hand, but there was no violence.

The district set up a toll-free hotline on Monday to receive reports of suspected abuse at Miramonte, said school board President Monica Garcia in a statement.

Garcia added that the district would step up efforts to ensure students and staff realized the importance of reporting misconduct.

In the same school district, a janitor at a San Fernando Valley elementary school was arrested on suspicion of committing a lewd act with a child on a campus.

Paul Adame, 37, was taken into custody after a mother told police on Sunday that he had inappropriate contact with her child during school hours Friday at Germain Elementary School in the Chatsworth area north of Los Angeles, police Capt. Kris Pitcher said at a news conference.

The captain declined to provide details but urged anyone who might know of other possible victims to contact police.

Adame was booked and released on $100,000 bail Monday. It could not be immediately determined if he had an attorney.

There was no immediate connection between the arrest of the janitor and the cases at Miramonte, which is 15 miles away in an unincorporated county area of South Los Angeles.

A central Missouri teenager who confessed to strangling, cutting and stabbing a 9-year-old girl because she wanted to know how it felt to kill someone was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison with the possibility of parole …[Emphasis mine. F. G.]

From the Republican presidential candidates to top GOP lawmakers in Washington, party leaders are engaging in a full-court press against the Obama Administration's decision to force employers affiliated with religious groups … More »

Obama's chief spokesman and his top campaign strategist both said the administration was searching for ways to allay the concern of Roman Catholics who say the birth control mandate would force them to violate their religious beliefs against contraception. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said the policy was a "huge mistake" that the administration should reconsider. "And if they don't, Congress will act," McConnell said.

On the campaign trail, GOP presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich heaped new criticism on the president, with Romney accusing Obama of an "assault on religion" and Gingrich calling the rule an "attack on the Catholic Church."

Obama's spokesman defended the decision that prompted the flare-up, even as he raised the prospect of some adjustment. He said women working for church-affiliated employers must be able to get contraception, but he also made clear that the White House wants to accommodate the concerns of the employers who would be required to provide birth control coverage regardless of their religious beliefs.

"There are ways to, I think, help resolve this issue that ensures that we provide that important preventive service, that health care coverage, to all women ... in a way that also tries to allay some of these concerns," press secretary Jay Carney said.

The spokesman did not say what those ways might be but said there were "a lot of different ideas out there." Separately, Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod made the same point. "The real question is how do we get together and resolve this in a way that respects the concerns that have been raised but also assures women across this country that they're going to have the preventive care that they need," Axelrod said on MSNBC.

The comments by Axelrod and Carney created a sense that the White House's public emphasis has clearly shifted and that further accommodation would be considered. But there was no sign the administration would move to completely withdraw the rule, and it was unclear that the White House could strike the balance of ensuring contraceptive coverage for all while defusing the fierce opposition of some religious groups when those two points are in conflict.

Some Catholic supporters of the administration said they had noticed a shift in White House rhetoric that gave them hope a compromise could be worked out. "Publicly you can see a change in the administration," said Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats For Life of America. "It's very different from what was said before, that this is final and nothing is going to change."

Options for a compromise could include granting leeway for a church-affiliated employer not to cover birth control, provided it referred employees to an insurer who would provide the coverage. Another idea, previously rejected by the administration, calls for broadening the definition of a religious employer that would be exempt from the mandate beyond houses of worship and institutions whose primary purpose is to spread the faith. That broader approach would track a definition currently used by the IRS, bringing in schools, hospitals and social service agencies that deal with the general public.

The president of the Catholic Health Association, a trade group representing Catholic hospitals that defied church bishops to provide critical support for Obama's health care law and is now fighting the birth control requirement, said she thinks the administration is starting to feel the pressure.

"I do know many people who care about this administration and this president and the good works that Catholic organizations have done are raising this issue," said Sister Carol Keehan. "I do know the administration is concerned. This was never done with the intent of creating a huge problem for the Catholic Church, but it certainly ended up doing that."

It is time for you alleged conservatives to realize the truth: Only a faithful Catholic can be trusted to be a real conservative. Only the Catholic Church holds the line and has done so for 2,000 years. Can you really trust other people whose morality and "values" change as their desires change?

Mr. Santorum is not perfect by any means, but he is more trustworthy than all the rest.

And just think what a wonderful contrast he is to the jug-eared commie ghoul...

Written off only a few weeks ago, Santorum won caucus votes Tuesday in Minnesota and Colorado and a primary in Missouri -- a clean sweep in the latest turnaround in a topsy-turvy Republican race to pick a candidate to take on President Barack Obama in the November elections.

Santorum had been seen surging in the Midwestern states of Minnesota and Missouri thanks to support from evangelical Christians, but few expected him to win in the Rocky Mountain west.

It was a bitter blow for Romney, who had romped home in Colorado and Minnesota during his 2008 bid with large leads in the final counts.

While the triple win catapulted Santorum at least for the moment past former House speaker Newt Gingrich into the role of Romney's main rival, the ex-senator from Pennsylvania insisted his wins were not just symbolic.

"I don't stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama," he said in a victory speech in Saint Charles, Missouri.

Early Wednesday Santorum told CNN: "We definitely are the campaign right now with the momentum (and) enthusiasm on the ground."

But not the resources, insisted the better-funded team Romney, which issued a statement Tuesday saying Santorum does not have a deep enough war chest or the political machinery necessary to mount a winning national campaign.

Nevertheless, the latest contests could reposition the Republican battle ahead of "Super Tuesday" on March 6, when 10 states vote at once in the state-by-state nominating process.

Romney goes into that day as the man to beat, but Santorum's triumphs put fresh pressure on the man who was once governor of liberal Massachusetts among a party base that still doubts his conservative bona fides.

"I don't know if Santorum's wins... constitute a major upset, but they are surprising and do show just how soft Romney's support is," political science professor John Brehm of the University of Chicago told AFP.

Santorum was the big winner in Missouri's primary, with 55 percent of the vote, more than double Romney's take. In Minnesota, Santorum led with 45 percent and Romney was third, behind small-government crusader congressman Ron Paul.

The shock of the night was Colorado, where Santorum beat Romney by five percent.

"What a night for Santorum and a disaster for Mitt," professor Charles Franklin at Marquette University Law School told AFP.

"This certainly raises the stakes for Super Tuesday."

Although the wins didn't change the standings -- Romney remains in the lead, with Gingrich second -- Santorum argued the results showed he can win when candidates and their political action committees (PACs) don't unleash a barrage of negative ads, as was the case in Florida and South Carolina.

But Brehm said Romney's team could "unload all the venom they can muster on Santorum, who just does not have the money of his own or a patron SuperPAC to join in on his side."

Santorum surprised many when he won the Iowa caucuses on January 3.

But that was more than a month ago and he badly needed to reset a campaign that flagged through New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and last weekend in Nevada, where he finished last.

Romney has three big victories under his belt, but the former governor of liberal Massachusetts continues to face withering accusations of "flip-flopping" on key conservative issues.

In theory, Tuesday's states held rich pickings as candidates try to secure enough delegates to pocket the 1,144 needed to secure the nomination which will be decided at the August party convention.

But the results in Colorado and Minnesota act as a guide for later state conventions, while Missouri's vote was dubbed a "beauty contest" as the state will only award its delegates after a March 17 caucus.

"Since they were non-binding, that blunts it a bit, but it does provide fodder for the narrative that Romney cannot close the deal with the right, particularly with social conservatives," said David Damore of University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

About Me

First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct.
"My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up.
What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.